The powers that be knew that the Yahoo brand needed a major revamp. So they decided to redesign the company’s well-known logo.

As you may have guessed, this change did nothing to improve the brand’s reputation. Not only that, but the online community was very critical of the redesign.

And even if their new logo was excellent, it still wouldn’t have made a difference. That’s because they failed to address the main reason that their popularity was down – the functionality of their service.

Remember, there’s more to your branding than just the visual identity. To avoid the negative effects of unsuccessful branding, you must also address those other aspects of your identity.

Sure, great looking visuals can help you capture the attention of potential customers. But the only way to get them on board is to offer products and services that match what your competitors offer in terms of quality.

5. Focusing Solely on Customers

The success of your business depends on your customers, so it’s normal to focus your attention on them. But you shouldn’t do this right from the start.

That’s one of the more common branding mistakes that small businesses make. They keep adjusting their strategy to their customer’s needs, often to disappointing results.

Why does this happen?

Well, these businesses overlook the fact that they’re dealing with lighthouse customers. Most of these customers are here for the curiosity factor, but they’re not their target audience.

Of course, you shouldn’t ignore the early adopters as their input may be valuable going forward. But it takes time to attract the right customers. And it takes even longer to build lasting relationships with them.

Focus on getting investors on board first. They can help you find your footing and position your brand locally and globally.

Throughout this process, you’ll get a feel for the market and identify your target audience. Once you’ve built a strong, recognizable brand, you’ll be ready to focus on the needs of your loyal customers.

6. Not Keeping an Eye Out for Your Competition

While you’re focusing on investors and customers, you mustn’t lose sight of your competition. If you do, you could easily make not one but two common branding mistakes.

Firstly, learning from your competitors is essential to achieving success in your business. This is especially true if you’re only setting up your company.

But you’ll be denying yourself that opportunity if you fail to research your competition.

You wouldn’t learn from their successes and mistakes. You will thus be more likely to underestimate your competition and set yourself up for failure.

Some companies also tend to copy their competitors’ strategies without giving it a second thought. They seem to forget that the goal of branding is to set them apart from the competition.

This is wrong as no two brands are the same. As such, every brand needs its own custom strategy to succeed in a crowded market.

To avoid these two common branding mistakes, you need to know what your competitors are up to at all times. Learn about their strong points and find out how you could use their weaknesses to your advantage.

7. Limiting Your Marketing Budget

Cutting costs is one of the best ways to make your business profitable. But whatever you do, you shouldn’t limit your marketing budget.

It is one of the more common branding mistakes and definitely something you should avoid.

If you want your brand to succeed, you need to use all available marketing channels. And to do that, you’ll need a sizable budget, especially if you’re running a startup.

Your strategy has to be a combination of traditional and digital marketing. If you’re a local business, you could benefit even more from offline than online marketing.

Sure, you may have to invest a lot in your company’s marketing. But if you don’t do it, you’ll experience a major lack of brand awareness in the public. When there’s no way for people to hear about you, all your branding efforts will be in vain.

8. Expanding Before Turning a Profit

All entrepreneurs want only the best for their fledgling businesses. There’s no business owner that doesn’t want to expand their brand and take it global.

Some of them, however, choose to expand their business before it becomes profitable.

This is one of the most dangerous common business mistakes you could make. If you’ve ever seen an episode of “Shark Tank” or “Dragons’ Den”, you probably know this already.

Starting your own business is like building a house from the ground up. Before you can add one or more floors to your house, you need to build a strong foundation.

If you fail to do it step by step, one tiny mistake could cause everything you’ve built to fall apart. The same can happen to your business if you expand it too soon.

You need to build a strong local brand before you can expand it to other regions and countries. If you’re looking to expand your services, you first need to excel at those you already offer.

They launched their DVD mail rental service, the first of its kind, in 1998. It took them nine years to build a recognizable brand in the US, which is when they decided to expand to streaming.

It then took six years to position themselves as the leading streaming platform. Once they’ve achieved this status, they were finally ready to start producing their own content.

In all, it took Netflix 15 years to grow from a niche rental company into a worldwide brand. Sure, Qwikster was by no means a success, but Netflix’s brand was so strong that a failure like that couldn’t destroy it.

9. Lack of Progress

While it’s never a good idea to expand too soon, you will need to do it eventually. If you don’t, you could lose most of your customers to one of your competitors.

The global marketplace is evolving all the time. Customers are always looking to try new and improved products and services. The demand for innovation is always high and it’s your job to meet that demand.

If you fail to move with the times, your customers will look elsewhere for what they need.

Do you think Netflix would be this successful in 2018 if it remained a DVD rental service? Would Amazon be the media powerhouse it is if it was still only selling books?

The answer to both questions is no.

Improving and expanding your services is one of the best ways to keep your brand fresh and relevant. It’s what your customers expect from you and what you need to do to stay in the game.

10. Not Having a Backup Plan

Not all branding strategies will work, no matter how well thought-out they are. But the results of unsuccessful branding for a business can sometimes be devastating.

It is thus important to always have a backup plan.

Think of it as a recovery plan or a set of emergency measures. Its sole purpose is to ensure that your business doesn’t suffer in case your branding strategy fails. At the same time, it needs to be something that you can implement very quickly.